"I love deliciously simple math and logic that shatters the myth that autism "has always been with us." You?

"Epidemic denial doesn't add up. Take the US population of 124 million in 1931--the year the oldest child in that first report on autism was born. Divide that number by the current autism prevalence of one in sixty-eight children. There should have been 1.8 million Americans with autism in 1931.

There weren't. We have scoured the medical literature for cases before then, and there are essentially none to be found. This may seem counterintuitive--surely such children have always been around, misdiagnosed by a less sophisticated medical establishment or simply missed because they were hidden away in the attic or mental institution--but it's the simple truth.

Back up a bit more: how many people have ever lived on Earth? About 100 billion by 1931. Again, simple math yields about 1.5 billion autistic individuals who have lived before 1930.

Now we begin to glimpse the emptiness behind the Epidemic Denier's claims."

Comments

In the book The Age of Autism, the cases of several children abandoned at Bedlam Asylum are described. They had reacted to the smallpox vaccination with vaccine encephalitis and autism. One little girl had been normal, but lost her speech and started acting crazy, picking up coals from the fire with her bare hands.

I think the very rare cases of autism before 1932, when mercury was added to the diphtheria vaccine for the first time, causing the cases of autism examined by Dr. Kanner, were nearly all, if not all, caused by encephalitic reactions to the smallpox vaccine. And now again the sheer number of vaccines given has more than made up in cases of vaccine encephalitis for any shortfall in autism caused by mercury since 2002 or whenever most of it was taken out.

Have just finished reading this really excellent, thoroughly researched book.

Thank you so much Mark and Dan (hope you get this message), for setting out the indisputable facts about the huge increase in autism in a way that those 'Deniers' could not refute. I have marked many passages (with sticky notes) for future reference/discussion as, even in my close family, I have been told 'it is just better diagnosis, isn't it?'

So much research has obviously been carried out and the resulting book is a triumph.

"I'm sure there were at least some cases of autism before the 1930s but they would have been very rare"

Indeed, Dan and Mark mention likely cases from 19th century British records that were scoured some years ago by Mitzi Waltz and Paul Shattock but they only came up with a very few. Everyone, however, should not miss a chance to read the book.

Jeannette, that's an interesting point. I'm sure there were at least some cases of autism before the 1930s but they would have been very rare. If they were caused by congenital rubella they would be rare because most people caught rubella in early childhood, thus avoiding it during pregnancy. I believe nature has a way of balancing things out, and the balance has been upset by modern medicine, particularly by vaccines, and that we have yet to see the worst effects of this mistake.

A question that has occurred to me for those who say "autism has always been with us" and "we're just diagnosing it better" and "it's genetic," since autism came to be associated with congenital rubella syndrome (at least apparently after thimerosal preserved immune globulin was used to treat CRS) and rubella has been around for some time much longer than the 1930s, why autism wasn't firstly identified as a German measles syndrome sometime well before 1930?

Maybe epidemic deniers could find much of the 1.5 billion cases in the pre-1930s history post rubella infections? Might that not be a pretty helpful place to consider looking?

The year 1931 is too long ago for all but a few people now living to relate to, so a far more convincing argument is to point out that nobody who was at school in 1985, when access to medicine was available to nearly the entire population, had ever heard of autism, while the standards of diagnosis of the time can be recalled by still practicing doctors and there is no evidence for such large numbers of children being otherwise diagnosed and existing out of the public eye.

A link to another item basically destroying America... how is this drug STILL even on the market ???

OxyContin, in its current form, was launched in 1995, and it took no time in becoming a staple on Doctor’s prescribing pads. Sales were at $1.5 billion by 2002, and the Sackler family hasn’t looked back since

I know as a child that those that had polio were around and about in my community.
I know that as an adult that those with autism, higher functioning is around and about in my community. Hmmm, well more than just autism out there; auto immune diseases is far more rampant than polio or autism.

The difference in the two, all seems to depend on how our federal medical agencies decided to perceive the threat.

I guess it is true, that people wait to see what the news media's reaction is to everything before deciding how how they themselves feel.